"Amy Winehouse asked me a while ago if I had written any new songs," says the man who now prefers to be known as Peter Doherty. "I played her something, and when I had finished, she looked at me and said, 'Is that it? Is that all you've got?"

Judging by the rows of empty seats at tonight's show, the late soul siren was not alone in losing patience with his creative inertia. The Doherty soap opera has rolled on this year, with the singer serving a jail sentence for cocaine possession, but clearly he did not take advantage of this enforced idleness to pen any fresh material.

Alone on the huge stage, without even a trilby at a rakish angle, and flanked only by two small amps, Doherty looks like a glorified busker and, as he rifles through his Libertines, Babyshambles and solo back catalogue, he effectively is. Spindly, ramshackle flights of fancy such as All at Sea and What a Waster may be sporadically thrilling, but they are also awfully familiar as well as intensely frustrating as they are packed with artistic promise that has never remotely been fulfilled.

Doherty is in wistfully reflective mode, thanking his decreasing but ferociously loyal followers for their support during "some weird times", dedicating a song to deceased heiress and film-maker Robin Whitehead and strumming through a scratchy but affecting cover of Winehouse's Tears Dry on Their Own. His edgy charisma remains intact and songs such as What Katie Did and Time for Heroes are visceral gems, but when Doherty promises to play no more shows until he has penned new material, you virtually feel the under-populated hall sigh with relief.